Posts Tagged ‘honda jazz’

Honda offers a glimpse at two unidentified concepts coming to the Beijing Motor Show this month.

It wasn’t all that many years ago when we began seeing significant news emerging from the Beijing Motor Show. Of course, it wasn’t all that long ago that China emerged from being an automotive backwater to being the world’s biggest car market.

And this year is likely to prove one of the biggest at the biennial Beijing show, with automakers such as Nissan, GM and Volkswagen all planning announcements in less than two weeks. The list also includes Honda, which has just released sketches of two concept vehicles it plans to debut in the Chinese capital.

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While it’s difficult to be sure what we’re seeing, the top shot would suggest something in the Accord category, no surprise considering the ever-popular sedan is set to get a complete update in the months ahead. We already got a sense of where Honda is going with the Accord Coupe, thanks to the two-door prototype that premiered in Detroit, last January, but this could be the eagerly-awaited sedan.

The walkout was launched on May 17 at a parts plant in the southern province of Guangdong at a transmission plant that supplies Honda’s auto assembly operations in China. The strike has cost the Japanese carmaker thousands of units in lost production, including versions of the Jazz subcompact that are shipped to Europe.

The walkout is unusual in that the official Communist-backed All China Federation of Labor Unions normally seeks to avoid confrontation with management. Some workers at the transmission plant, which is located in the city of Foshan, claim they were physically assaulted by union leaders. Others were reportedly fired when they declined to accept Honda’s initial offer.

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The Honda plant has a well-educated workforce, most of its line employees boasting college or 2-year technical degrees. But the automaker has been able to hold down wages, in many cases, by bringing in many employees as “trainees.”

An early proposal by Honda, according to reports from China, would have offered the striking workers less than $2 a day to settle their grievances, but the latest offer, the maker said, would increase pay and benefits by 24%. Workers had sought a 53% bump, to $340 a month, or 2,300 yuan.